Sun Picks Up Procom

Sun Microsystems will acquire the network-attached storage (NAS) system assets of Procom Technology for $50 million in cash.

The deal, rumored for months, isn't much of a stretch. Procom's NAS software has been running in Sun's StorEdge 5000 NAS servers since April 2004 under a software licensing agreement.

NAS systems have their own network address and can quickly serve up stored files because they don't have to compete for computing resources from the main server with other applications.

In the new arrangement, Sun will own the intellectual property rights to the software and take on some of Procom's engineers. The move will help Sun build future NAS storage systems much faster, Sun said in a statement.

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As its name implies, Honeycomb is a clustered software architecture that uses new metadata and search tools to retrieve files in large storage systems much more efficiently. Files could include e-mail attachments or medical images, such as X-rays.

Honeycomb senior project manager Mike Davis said in January the software/hardware combination was created to help customers tap into millions of stored, often static files, spanning several terabytes.

Pulling files from large pools of information is nothing new for major storage vendors. IBM makes a SAN File System that scales to several terabytes, while HP has recently released its second-generation StorageWorks grid software.

Sun hopes to build a buzz about Honeycomb similar to the IBM and HP systems.